This 100-Year-Old Copenhagen Label Has Teamed Up With the City’s Coolest Jewelry Designer

Denmark has a patron saint of design and his name is Georg Jensen. The eponymous founder started his silversmith business in 1904 and remains today one of the most renowned names for minimal and modern Danish decor, tableware, and jewelry. So when Sophie Bille Brahe was approached by a Georg Jensen executive, Nicholas Manville, to talk about a collaboration, she felt a great sense of duty and pressure. “My grandmother bought her first piece of Georg Jensen, a brooch, to celebrate when she retired as a nurse,” the jewelry designer says. “I think all Danish families have a story about their own Georg Jensen collections and I felt that I had a responsibility as a Danish designer since this company means so much to so many people here.” Bille Brahe worked with Manville and the Georg Jensen team to create the 19-piece Halo collection, which officially launches tomorrow. The jewelry includes gold and diamond hoop earrings, a bangle, a floating diamond ring, and a subtle pendant necklace.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve worked with a local designer,” Manville notes. “We’re also known for our larger, more sculptural pieces and we were really looking to lighten the expression but still make a statement. We asked, ‘How do you find the fine line between something that feels delicate but strong?’ ”

Bille Brahe went straight to the archives in search of the right answer. “It was very much about trying to figure out what language I could bring to Georg Jensen and how I could carve out a little space for myself in that archive,” she says. “My way of making jewelry, which is more curves and soft, sculptural lines, hasn’t been done so much in the house’s history.” Bille Brahe adds, “For me, it was very much about thinking about what women want to wear at the moment and what they can wear all day in an effortless way, instead of the classic Georg Jensen pieces that are meant for special occasions. Hoops initially came to mind.” As she often does when starting a collection, Bille Brahe also challenged herself to take an element of jewelry that she doesn’t like and reinterpret it. She’s done it in the past with pearls and, in this case, it was the floating diamond. “It’s now my favorite ring in the collection,” she says. “It’s glamorous without being too over the top.”

Above is an exclusive first look at the Georg Jensen and Sophie Bille Brahe Halo collection.

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